Saudi Arabia's most senior religious scholars have set themselves at odds with government policy – perhaps deliberately – by issuingtheir fatwa about working women last Sunday.

The fatwa, signed by the Grand Mufti and six other top clerics, forbids women from working "in a place where they intermingle with men" – at a time when the government is trying to encourage female employment.

"There is some sort of a clash now between the political society and the religious society, a clash over an important issue," Khalid al-Dakhil, who teaches political sociology at King Saud University, told AFP. "The government is now in a very difficult position."

This is the kind of situation that King Abdullah was apparently trying to prevent when he issued a decree last August which restricted the issuing of fatwas to officially-authorised scholars. But it looks as if the authorised scholars, in their first politically important fatwa since the decree, have responded by kicking sand in his face.

Saudiwoman's Weblog has the full text of the fatwa, in English and Arabic. It was written in answer to a question, though as AFP points out, the source of the question was not given (as it usually is) – implying that the scholars posed the question to themselves because they wanted to raise the issue.

The reply, also unusually, cited no scriptural sources to justify the scholars' ruling. The resulting fatwa was also issued to the media with unusual speed.

"It's a planned thing ... to hinder the progress of women," Reem Asaad, a Jeddah economics professor, told AFP.

The fatwa is not legally binding on the Saudi government, and Saudiwoman's Weblog notes that the Council of Senior Scholars has previously forbidden things things that remain legal, such as music and non-Islamic satellite TV channels. 

Nevertheless, judges in the kingdom's sharia courts will be able to base rulings on it.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 3 November 2010.